[1] La Perouse is situated 14 kilometres (8.7 mi) south of the Sydney central business district on the northern headland of Botany Bay.

Named for a French navigator who stayed in the area for six weeks in 1788, La Perouse is the only Sydney suburb where Aboriginal people have held on to their territory from settlement until the present day.

It is also the story of a suburb where Aboriginal people and Europeans from a wide variety of backgrounds co-existed and established relationships on their own terms in the mid 20th century outside the prevailing government programs of separation and assimilation.

[1] In 1897 the APB rejected requests from missionaries for more huts and increased rations because it was thought that this would encourage more people to move from the South Coast to La Perouse.

[1][5][6] After World War II the tourists included migrants from Mediterranean Europe who felt an affinity with the La Perouse beach and landscape.

[1] Moving the Aboriginal people from La Perouse re-emerged as an issue during the 1920s when Randwick Council responded to pressure from the South Kensington and District Chamber of Commerce which wrote to the APB expressing concerns about the reserve's housing conditions, sanitation and "morality".

It read:[1] As a compromise measure, Randwick Council in 1931 converted the foreshore section of the original reserve into a park and public recreation area, and moved the huts away from the waterfront.

[1] From the start of the Depression in 1929 hundreds of unemployed people moved to La Perouse to camp close to the beaches with access to fresh water, natural shelter and the ocean.

White and black children attended the same school, which was unusual at a time when government policy aimed to separate Indigenous and European Australians.

Post World War II migrants from Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Germany, Malta and the Middle East who were either unemployed or homeless from the severe post-war housing shortage, joined Aboriginal people from the South Coast at the Frog Hollow and Hill 60 camps.

Jack Horner, honorary secretary of the Australian-Aboriginal Fellowship wrote repeatedly to Randwick Council, the NSW and Federal governments asking for improved housing conditions, opposing the closure and relocation of the reserve and organising a petition.

Assimilation had been intended to gradually incorporate Aboriginal people into wider society, yet here they were living separate from, and in worse conditions than, the majority of white Australians.

This group, (later called the La Perouse Aborigines Christian Endeavour Society) built the original mission church at the reserve in 1894, on Frenchman's Beach.

[1] In 1894 the Mission House was built, Miss Jenny Watson was appointed as the first full-time missionary and the La Perouse Aborigines Christian Endeavour Society was formed with seven active members.

[1] Of the missionaries who worked at the church in its earliest decades, arguably the most important was Margaret Jane (Retta) Long (nee Dixon) (1878-1956) the daughter of Irish-born Baptists.

[1] Unable to pay in full the money it owed, the NSWAM resolved in 1902 to function as a "faith mission" and to rely on God to supply its needs.

The evangelical press reported in detail her travel, her needs (a lady's bicycle), her appearances at Sunday services, and the "bright singing and testimonies" of Aborigines with whom she worked.

When Dixon was installed as missionary at La Perouse in 1897, Emma, in front of a large crowd, promised Retta's father and friends to be a mother to her.

Emma was buried in Botany cemetery, "in the presence of a large company of mourners", with her funeral expenses paid for by a "white friend", indicating her close association with missionaries and their supporters.

[1] Emma's grandson Joseph (1912-1978) won repute as a boomerang maker, and demonstrated his throwing skill on the Eiffel Tower in Paris and for Queen Elizabeth II on her visit to Sydney in 1954.

An adjacent residence with Sunday school rooms (the Manse building) was constructed in, or shortly before, 1934 and was dedicated to the United Aborigines Mission (UAM).

Youth and adult church social activities included dancing, to old time and rock and roll music, at the Blue Hall (now demolished) that was located to the west of the Manse (outside the proposed SHR curtilage).

The state government ran summer camps for Aboriginal children and young people for two weeks in early January on the flat ground south of the Blue Hall (also outside the proposed SHR curtilage).

A surviving published black and white photograph shows this building to have been a simple one-room gabled structure with only one six-paned window in the long side wall.

The chair behind the pulpit is plaqued: "In loving memory of our dear little son Lyle A Stuart - age 11 months - safe in the arms of God."

These connections are considered to have fostered the growth of the La Perouse community in the 1870s when it became an informal refuge for many from the South Coast who were forced off their lands by the spread of dairy farming.

Many relationships, partnerships and families grew from the interaction of the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities on the La Perouse reserve and in the Happy Valley, Frog Hollow and Hill 60 camps.

[1] The Aboriginal rock engravings on the site demonstrate the La Perouse community's engagement with European historical processes (in this case the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge).

Out of Retta's work at La Perouse was born the Aborigines Inland Mission (AIM) which became the most successful broad-based Indigenous missionary society in NSW to that time.

They were produced to mark the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in March 1932 and demonstrate the La Perouse Aboriginal community's engagement with a non-Indigenous event of state significance through the cultural practice of engraving.